“The Deadliest Sin in Acting”
Brian J. Smith plays an honest tow-truck driver who finds himself risking everything on a dangerous quest to provide for his struggling family.
Pride is a deadly sin for a reason, whether you believe in that kind of thing or not. It isolates you from society, which makes it anathema to an actor. Our work as actors requires us to absorb society’s light and dark aspects and construct them into performances that not only offer aspirational goals for our audiences, but also some form of catharsis. Having said that however, pride is a real thing that real people in society have — just like the other seven deadly sins. As Method Actors then, we play with fire when we explore pride, because we have to find it within ourselves.
The nitty-gritty of acting that nobody talks about publicly, is that you have to explore your shadow psyche in order to understand your instrument. When you understand your body and where you carry certain emotions, you’re able to maximize your time on-set when the cameras are rolling. The fact that we never openly talk about safe ways of accessing parts of our shadow psyche, leads to the skewed perception that what we do has no deep psychological ramifications if done without care. The general downplaying of the dangerous games some actors play with their psyche is well documented in popular media. I think pride is often the reason that stops actors from sharing information with other actors; and I think it’s rooted in the PR cloak of mystery that shrouds the profession. The false modesty that is almost expected of you is a form of pride that we’ve all been guilty of.
Vanity Fair: How did you connect to the role of [Insert Any Psychopathic Character]?
Actor: It just came to me and I went with the feeling.
This makes me think that an actor playing pride on-screen has to do a lot of deep and heavy real work to separate themselves from the character, because the mechanics of the profession runs on the image of pride. In acting class, we were taught how to manage our public personas on social media, and suffice it to say, if my professors saw any of my social media profiles, I’d be like John Wick: excommunicado. I was always careful not to take the image of my vocation so loftily. That’s not true for a lot of actors and it shows in their work. We’ve all either seen or been that actor who found it difficult to play characters who are humble or downtrodden — the underdog. It’s either phoned-in or pitifully over-exaggerated. Brian J. Smith however, is not one of those actors. He handled his role in Chaser 22 with such pitch-perfect nuance, that he did something hard in this day and age: he made a black male audience member like me feel empathy for a white man (I’m allowed to say that: excommunicado, remember).
In the film, Smith plays Ben Dankert, a married father of one at the bottom of the tow-truck industry gutter. His wife Avery, played by Kaniehtiio Horn, works a dead-end job in a diner with the hopes of opening her own establishment one day. It’s a tragic set-up from the very beginning, made even worse when Ben promises his son a bicycle for his birthday, when he couldn’t even afford groceries. From the moment Smith comes onto the screen, you fall in love with his character for his earnestness. His vulnerability in 22 Chaser has such a tactile quality that you immediately believe him.
As the film develops however, Ben’s pride is revealed as one of the major reasons why his family is in the predicament they’re in. The film tackles Ben’s pride head-on and it makes a profound statement about the high value we place on morality in a society, which is largely corrupt. For a long time, I never wanted to talk about the abuse I endured during high school because of pride. I felt like taking the moral high-ground and keeping the abuse to myself meant that I was strong. In reality it was my own shadow of pride leading me to believe that I was better than my tormentors were and that becoming a movie star would be the best revenge. For a long time, I was blind to the fact that the trauma was affecting my life in many ways, including my performances. There were times where I actually ran off set and held up production, because certain scenes were bringing up the same feelings of public humiliation that I’d felt on a daily basis for 5 years of my teenage life. In talking about how I overcame my abuse in The Kate Hudson One (The Late Flight Show S01E26) I learned that pride was driving how I felt about my past.
In 22 Chaser, Ben learns that taking pride in the moral high-ground doesn’t pay the bills. He comes to understand that being “civilized” doesn’t mean that you can’t get dirty in order to improve your situation; it just means that you know when to be dirty and when to clean up your act. This is contrasted by the consistently repulsive Bissey (John Kapelos). When you see an actor like Smith pulling off a role like this, it makes you wonder about where they’re drawing from. Are they just using Laban Movements, or something deeper, like Sense Memory Technique? Whatever Smith is doing, he’s doing it well. Ben goes through a “loss of innocence” in the span of one night and I was on the edge of my seat throughout it all. To find out whether Ben makes it out alive or not, you’ll have to see for yourself. 22 Chaser is streaming now, on Amazon Prime.
See You Next Wednesday,
Charlie
#bjsmith #ashmore #pride
review
TL;DR
8/10
I enjoyed this modest Canadian film. It was filled with socially relevant themes explored in a setting I’d never seen before. The story was well-paced as the stakes Ben (played by Brian J. Smith) went through kept getting higher and higher.
$
BB – Big Budget – $20mil+
SB- Small Budget – $5mil+
LB – Low Budget – $1 mil+ (est.)
MB – Micro Budget – $250K+
NB – No Budget – <$50K
*
Brian J. Smith, Kaniehtiio Horn, Aaron Ashmore, Raoul Trujillo, Wole Darambola, Shaun Benson, Lisa Codrington, John Kapelos
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Brian J. Smith did a spectacular job leading this film. The struggle his character Ben grappled with came from an instinctual place, which drew me deeper into rooting for him. Smith’s talent in this film is apparent from his choice to play Ben sincerely in a part that could’ve easily been rote if played by a less experienced actor. Kaniehtiio Horn as his wife Avery was refreshing to watch; and it was exciting to see familiar face Aaron Ashmore (as Sean) playing against type.
Charlie can be seen taking flights and acting like a thespian on Scribblebytes’ The Late Flight Show on YouTube. Click here to subscribe.
Vlog episode referenced in blog: The Kate Hudson One
The Late Flight Movie Blog 